Among the many points of interest in Newport, the still-surviving “Newport Toll” is certainly not least. In these latter days, when traffic fares the road unhindered, all public roads are toll-free—except the road through Newport. Pedestrians and cyclists in general, and the whole of the traffic from certain specified neighbouring villages are exempt; but waggons from elsewhere pay 2d. each, forwards and backwards; higglers’ horses, ½d. each; and sheep and all other cattle, 4d. per score. The exempted places are: Newport, Wicken, Saffron Walden, Great and Little Chesterford, the Wendens, Quendon, and Widdington.

How comes it, then, that this one toll survives when others have been abolished? That is a long story, but one that may readily be summarised here. It seems, then, up to some two hundred years ago the little stream which even now runs across the highway, and is known variously as Wicken Water and the Granta, was unbridged, and crossed only by a ford. Neither the county nor the parish would be at the expense of building a bridge, and at last the lord of the manor obtained an Act of Parliament which conferred upon him the right of building, and authorised the levying of those tolls which are collected to this day. The tolls are still vested in the lord of the manor, but are not very strictly enforced, and as the gate has not, for many years past, been closed, and is, indeed, half buried in the ground and nearly rotted away, a good many waggons and many cattle must, especially at night, escape paying. It was a Smith, of Shortgrove, who obtained the Act and built the bridge, and, although Shortgrove Park has been let, these rights are still in the family. The toll has often been disputed, and was once, indeed, some thirty years since, the subject of a law-suit, when the uncle of the present Smith asserted his rights, and won.

Before railways had come, to clear the roads of most of the cattle and the waggons, the income of this toll-gate was considerable, but in these days it is not worth the while of the owner of these petty rights to collect the small gains, and the toll-house has been let as an ordinary cottage, but, in consideration of the tolls, at a rent slightly above its value as a dwelling. The occupier is, therefore, in a rather sporting position, and, by strict attention to business and by keeping sleepless vigils, might stand to gain quite a respectable trifle of pocket-money out of sheep that pass in the night, or from waggons that creak and rumble by in the early hours of morn, before the day is well aired. But it is an elderly occupant, and many a fourpence and a twopence go unchallenged into the darkness. Only the slow-going vehicles and the flocks and herds of daytime find themselves intercepted. One of the most humorous things in connection with this quaint survival was an incident that came under the notice of the present writer, when a huge furniture-removing van—one of the kind that goes at a two-and-a-half miles an hour pace—was stopped, and, much to the amazement of the driver (who, in common with the world at large, thought all tolls to be things of the past), made to pay.

It is the most insignificant of streams that causes all this pother, and the smallest of bridges, but it can still be seen, where the road dips, how awkward the old ford must have been.

Near by stands the starkly ugly old gaol, put to other uses since the police business was transferred to Saffron Walden, and now, on account of the imitation fetters that still distinguish its frontage, known as “the Links.”

Directly the bridge is crossed the road forks; the old road going downward in a curve to the right, along what must once have been a particularly wet and marshy course, the newer route continuing straight ahead, at a higher level. Both unite again in little over a hundred yards. Between the two, and at a higher level than either, on road-bridges, arches, and embankments, goes the railway; the rail-level somewhat above the roofs of the very picturesque line of ancient farms, inns, and cottages that front the older route.

We have not even yet done with Newport, for it is beside this old road that one of the most interesting houses of the village stands. This is the so-styled “Crown House,” formerly the “Horns” inn, traditionally said to have been a posting-house or halting-place on the road, used by Charles II., Nell Gwynne, the dissolute George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, and the profligate Earl of Rochester. It displays an elaborately decorated frontage of moulded plaster, and takes its name from the crown in high relief over the door. Criticism has sought to destroy the tradition by pointing out that the date of 1692 over the doorway is five years later than the death of Nell, who died, aged thirty-seven, in 1687, and three later than the death of Charles; but traditions very often enshrine truths, and it is permissible to suppose the date merely records some old-time restorations or additions in honour of that exalted patronage and those patrons then so recently passed away. The “Crown House” is not interesting within, and except the hall, paved with black and white marble, it has no outstanding features. The house has long been untenanted. Attempts have recently been made to transfer these traditions to the “Coach and Horses” inn, near by; but although that is a very old house, its appearance does not quite support the dignity thus thrust upon it.

The very last of Newport’s many notable features is the picturesque old farmhouse standing by itself, looking upon the road as one leaves for Audley End. This is “Hospital Farm,” and its isolated position is thoroughly warranted, for it stands on the site of the ancient Leper Hospital of Saints Mary and Leonard, founded here in the reign of King John by Richard de Newport. The garden wall still displays some fragments of stone said to have come from the chapel. Let us look on them with what veneration we may, even though they might equally well have come from the kitchen. It is with much more, and a very genuine, respect one gazes upon the Big Stone between that wall and the road. It is very properly spelled with capital letters, for it is as “Newport Big Stone” the Essex folk know it, and besides, it has a history going back to many uncounted centuries before Richard de Newport and his lepers came here—a history no one can narrate, because it opened in those abysmal voids of time before history began to be. Passing farmhands volunteer the information that it has been here all their time, which is fairly obvious, for it is, in fact, a glacial boulder, and was left here by some expiring glacier in the beginning of things, before the men of the Stone Age came upon the scene; nay, even before the protoplasmal common ancestral jelly-fish began to crawl in the lifeless ooze. Whence it was brought on the shoulders of that sliding ice-pack perhaps not even the most cocksure geologist could say; but it is, of course, wholly alien from Essex, which has no stone of any kind. A ruddy sandstone, it might have come from Devonshire, from Worcestershire, or from Midland districts, where red sandstone is a native formation; but it would be a matter of speculation to attempt to fix its origin. It is very large, must needs be enormously weighty, and must in years past have been sorely tempting to road surveyors hungering in this stoneless county for road metal. But having escaped destruction in those bygone years, we may suppose Newport Big Stone is now pretty safe on that score. Its presence here may, for all we know, have influenced the founder of that thirteenth-century hospital to place his buildings at this particular spot; for in after-years it became known as the “Leper Stone,” and was the rough-and-ready table on which old-time passers-by deposited their alms for the afflicted.